Everyone has their favourite shampoo—it may be their favourite because it makes their hair smell good, or look good, or they like the bottle, or it’s an inexpensive brand. But how much do any of us really know about what is even in our shampoo, or any cosmetic product?
Whenever I’ve tried to read the ingredients list on my shampoo bottle, I usually get as far as ingredient number three before the scientific names and multi-part compounds start to deter me.
Some of the common claims made in beauty product marketing include cell renewal, energy infusion, agents that increase cell growth, age repairing anti-oxidants, and many more. CBC News says, if the products did any of these things, they would be drugs.
One of the definitions of a drug put forward by the US Food and Drug Administration is a substance that triggers metabolic or cellular activity, modifying cellular structure or affecting body function. Under these parameters, drugs cannot be sold without meeting strictly legislated regulatory requirements to protect consumers. Drugs in Canada are regulated under Health Canada, and must meet legislated requirements as well. Cosmetic chemist Perry Romanowski told CBC News, “Either these cosmetics don’t work the way they say they do, or if they do work, then they’re illegal drugs.”
“Hair is dead and it’s amazing the number of claims they can come out with to convince you to get healthy hair,” Romanowski continued.
The things that cosmetic products can do for your hair and skin are fairly limited. They can wash away superficial debris like dirt and oils, they can apply surface substances to make it feel soft, and they can add fragrance. The functional ingredients in many of these products–the ones that actually perform these basic tasks–have been around for decades.
Romanowski says that many cosmetic products are variations of one formula. The functional ingredients that are the basis of many products include petrolatum, mineral oil, glycerine, and detergents.
However, these ingredients create a substance that is sticky, with an unattractive colour and odour, so additional aesthetic ingredients are added, the only purpose of which is to change the feel, fragrance, and colour of the substance itself. Most cosmetic products also use stabilizers and preservatives to improve the shelf-life.
According to Romanowski, many products also feature a small amount of something that sounds scientific or natural; it doesn’t affect the way the product works, but the marketing department can use it to sell the product. Romanowski calls these ingredients “fairy dust.”
“You just put a small drop in your formula, but then that becomes really most of the marketing story,” says Romanowski, adding that this is a frustrating part of a cosmetic chemist’s job.
Timothy Caulfield, a health law ethics professor and author at the University of Alberta, told CBC News, “They are trying to use the scientific-sounding terminology to make it sound like there is this in-depth science behind it, and often in the ads they will have people wearing white coats and a lot of DNA-looking-like visuals but it’s all baloney.”
“There really isn’t that much science behind a lot of the products that are being sold,” Caulfield continued.
So far in 2015, the US FDA has issued seven warning letters to cosmetic companies, cautioning them to stop making claims that cosmetics are biologically active as this would make them illegal drugs.
“Is there any product that you can buy in the store that is going to have a dramatic impact? I think the answer is no,” says Caulfield.
Romanowski concluded that price and quality are virtually unrelated when it comes to cosmetics. “The price is really reflective of the brand story, the packaging, the size of the company, the distribution. It has almost nothing to do with the cost that it takes to create the formula that goes in the bottle.”